Clearly a classic in the world of food studies, and in some ways, definitely worthy of that title. I struggled to get through this book at first--his rapid global history of sugar production bounced rapidly through time and was difficult to slog through to get to his arguments about the English working class. Once I did get there, his argument really came together, but before then, it was hard to see the point of where he was going. It should be noted that Mintz is really not all that interested in production but rather in the consumption of sugar among the English, and really among the English working class. It did its job, certainly, and I recognize how important it is as a work, but it didn't necessarily 'wow' me or make me rethink very much about how I saw the history of sugar.